The other day was "Nachos Day", the day to indulge in my favourite chips. Erzulie likes them straight out of the bag, but Elin likes them with salsa and cheese.....a girl after my own heart!

I'm still working on the Elven Archer costume. It's amazing how much sewing one can do in a day, but the accessories take forever. Yesterday I made the leather bag, and my workspace was a mess. I had out the big box of leather; the drawer with studs - just for one little stud; five drawers of beads for the dozen or so decorative beads; two drawers full of embroidery thread - one for the embroidered edge, the other for decorative cording; another drawer with metal rings because I needed two; the drawer with buckles because I needed two; the container of snaps for just one snap; the big box of feathers to search through for maybe six small feathers. All for one tiny leather bag!

I've started the quiver for the arrows. It needed to be bigger than Isar's, so I took the lazy way out, and scanned the original patterns against some blue paper, dragged the jpg into IPages, stretched it, made a pdf, and printed it out. Sounds like more work than it is, but it's faster and more accurate than trying to redraw the patterns larger. I will continue to work on the quiver as long as the light is good enough for tutorial photos. Otherwise I should just start on the next commission.

I've been having email issues. It seems my email provider was blacklisted a few days ago because they were still allowing some spam to get through. So some of my emails started bouncing back with error messages - because the filters on the computers I was sending to weren't accepting any emails from my provider. Of course it only impacted the two people I communicate with most!! Isn't that always the way?!?! Everyone else was fine. My techie son looked into it and said as of this morning the issue has been fixed, and my provider is off the blacklist, but it may still take a bit of time for my friend's computers to allow my emails through again. I know they read my Blog, so I thought I'd mention it here. No, I'm not dead, or in the hospital, and nothing terrible has transpired. I'm at the mercy of modern technology. Hopefully all will be working again soon.

Actually, it is faster to scan and resize. I did that with one of your free patterns so that it would fit the body of a Liv doll, and it worked perfectly. I would send you a copy of the picture, but since I don't believe in inundating others with my pics when I am enjoying their pics, I have not done so.

Made the dress in a rich purple with sparkles (the one for MSD with the tights, arm warmers and tube top under the pretty sleeveless dress) and did the accessories in a bright yellow. Was quite pleased with how it worked out.

Thank you for sharing your art.

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Jane

11/11/2013 04:25:28 am

How did you shrink a packet of crisps?! LOL! How clever to have made that!
Your dolls are truly alive and that is why I love them so much!

And I did smile at all the materials you just had to hand to make the bag. I can't really begin to imagine how wonderful your 'stash' drawers must be *sigh*

And I hope the email issues are sorted and back to normal as soon as possible.

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Martha Boers is an award-winning Canadian doll maker and costumer specializing in fantasy and historical-style costumes.Read More...